Essay/Term paper: Unabomber

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Law

"The world today seems to be going crazy."
The Unabomber's Manifesto

It was May 25th 1978, Terry Marker was on his usual patrol on
campus at the University of Illinois. This earmark package, addressed to an
engineering professor at Rensselaer from a material science professor at
Northwestern, was found in a parking lot. What seemed like an insignificant
misplaced parcel was about to start a reign of terror and the longest manhunt
in U.S. history. Officer Marker retrieved the package and began to open it;
the crude triggering mechanism set off the device. A flash of fire and smoke
spewed towards Terry's face as the match heads ignited and the mystery
package exploded. This event sparked the "most expensive manhunt in
United States history, ultimately costing upward to $50 million" (Douglas,
31). The reasoning behind this initial attack (and subsequent assaults) was
not known for sure until 15 years later in 1993, when the Unabomber's anti-
technology philosophy became public.
The Unabomber's 18 year tirade against technology killed three people
and maimed 23 others in a series of 16 attacks dating back to 1978. The
Unabomber's targets were universities and airlines (thus the "un" and the "a"
in the FBI's code name); proponents of technology. The Unabomber believes
that the present industrial-technological society is "narrowing the sphere of
human freedom" (Unabomber, 93).
The crudeness of the Unabomber's inaugural mail bomb attack was not
an indication of what was to come. The Unabomber's devices became more
sophisticated and deadly as his targets became more specific and focused.
"The pressure vessels in his bombs were the most sophisticated ever seen by
federal authorities" (Ewell, 3). His later efforts were sometimes concealed in
books and hand-carved boxes, had all hancrafted parts carved of wood and
metal (he made his own pins, screws and switches), and sometimes had
altimeter and barometric switches which would activate at precise altitudes in
an airplane. Bombs, like the one planted outside of a computer store in
Sacramento, were sometimes fitted with gravity triggers which would
detonate the bomb at the slightest touch. Later bombs contained two
independent systems of batteries and wires, a backup fail-safe mechanism,
installed to ensure the bombs detonation. The crime scene analyses
suggested that each bomb "took more than a hundred hours to construct"
(Douglas, 56).
The bombs were getting deadlier as the Unabomber's skill level
evolved. FBI agent James Fox says "This guy's done a wonderful job in self-
education (Gleick, 26). On April 24, 1995, Gilbert Murray, president of the
California Forestry Association, died instantly when a bomb exploded in his
office in Sacramento. The force of the blast was so great that it pushed nails
partly out of the walls in other offices in the building. The force of the
explosion was so great that the pieces of Murray's body; when retrieved,
filled eleven bags. Evidence was presented to the coroner in paint cans.
Some bombs like the one that killed Hugh Sutton, a computer store owner,
was filled with pieces of nails to maximize the devastation to the victim. He
also became more devious by targeting either the person to whom the
package was sent or the person who supposedly sent it. If the package didn't
make it to its intended victim it would be sent back to an alternate one.
The Unabomber left very few clues at the crime scenes. He was a
meticulous criminal, "these components bear markings of having been taken
apart and put back together repeatedly" said Chris Ronay, the FBI's top bomb
expert in the 1980's (Anez, 2 ). All addresses were typed on an arcane
typewriter to confound handwriting analyses. He hand crafted most of the
parts that made up his bombs because of the possibility of tracing store
bought parts back to a hardware store or electronics store. He made his own
chemicals out of commonly available chemicals. He made his own switches
that he could have bought at Radio Shack. He spent hours whittling, cutting,
and filing metal and wood to remove any hints of their origin. He would
repeatedly sand down all the wooden parts to his devices to remove any
possible fingerprints and make the boxes that encased his bombs look store
bought. The FBI Crime Lab originally nicknamed him the "Junkyard
Bomber" because the internal parts were constructed of leftover materials
such as furniture pieces , plumbing pipes, and sinktraps.
Across the continent, hundreds of FBI agents were pursuing the
Unabomber. They have deployed some of the worlds most powerful
computers. Task Force members crunched and recrunched scraps of data
through a "massive parallel-processing computer borrowed from the
Pentagon", sifting though school lists, drivers license registries, lists of people
who checked certain books out of libraries in California and the Mid West
(Gibbs, 31). The super-computers kept tract of the enormous data base that
the FBI had kept on possible suspects. The computers searched criminal
records and personal histories of thousands of suspects. When the FBI got a
new clue or hunch they would process it through the computers and see what
came up and who matched the latest profiles. They have enlisted the sharpest
crime-fighting minds. The Unabomb Task force was a multiagency team
comprised of the top experts from the FBI, ATF, local police departments
where the crimes took place, and from the Office of the Postal Inspector.
And they have chased down 20,000 tips, gone door to door to machine shops
and scrap yards, and interviewed thousands of suspects since the initial
bombing at the University of Illinois.
The Unabomber had kept investigators busy with a seemingly endless
list of obvious and subtle clues to his identity. The first written clue being a
message found from a bomb planted at Berkeley stating "Wu- It works! I told
you it would-R.V." Wu and R.V. are most likely professors at Berkeley but
"whether these clues really mean anything, or whether they are just the
bombers way of toying with the law wont be known till he is caught" (Marx,
2). The following are clues to the identity of the Unabomber:
WOOD
Wood is the most common theme in the clues to finding the
Unabomber, from its use as a material in the bombs to its appearance in the
names and addresses of victims. Small twigs were glued to a couple of the
devices found. Some of the bombs were encased in boxes hand crafted out
of hardwood. He polished and sometimes varnished his wood pieces, but it
was clear, from amateurish joints, that he is not a trained woodworker.
Bombs were fashioned with 2 x 4's to look like a pile of debris. A bomb was
mailed to United Airlines president Percy Wood, who lived in Lake forest.
One bomb was packaged inside the novel "Ice Brothers" by Arbor House,
whose symbol is a tree leaf. False return addresses have included such places
as Ravenswood and Forest Glen Road and from such people as Benjamin
Isaac Wood.
THE 9-DIGIT CODE
To authenticate his written communication the Unabomber included a
nine-digit code (550-25-4394) on all of his letters and manuscripts. Task
Force members discovered that the number was a real Social Security number
for a small-time career criminal from Northern California but determined he
had been in jail at the time of some of the bombings. He has since violated
parole and vanished. Ironically, he had a tattoo that read "PURE WOOD".
Possibly, the Unabomber knew him or had met him before.
STAMPS
The Unabomber avoids taking his packages to the post office and uses
a lot of stamps instead. He didn't seem to lick the stamps (that would leave
saliva traces), at least in his more recent bombings, it is possible that he
licked the stamps in earlier bombings. He usually used stamps featuring the
American Flag or playwright Eugene O'Neil, author of the "The Ice Man
Cometh".
Nathan R
On a 1993 letter from the Unabomber, authorities found the almost
imperceivable impression of the words that may have been written on a piece
of paper written on the letter. It said "Call Nathan R Wed 7pm" and
prompted a nationwide search for Nathan R. Investigators used drivers
license records and phone listings to find more than 10,000 Nathan R's.
They interviewed them all, but found no answers. This was more likely than
not a red-herring placed by the Unabomber to tease and confuse the Task
force.
F.C.
These initials have been included in some way in most of the bombs.
The initials were scratched into most of his bombs. The initials, also, were
spray-painted in the vicinity of several of the bomb sites. Authorities have
suggested that it might stand for an obscene phase directed towards
computers; like "F@%K Computers". The Unabomber in a few of his letters
to newspapers says its stands for "Freedom Club", the group he claims to be
responsible for the bombs. At one point, a university worker whose initials
were F.C. was scrutinized because of his open contempt for computers and
technology, but he was later cleared of suspicion (Taylor, A17).
EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION
"It was a face that taunted a nation", a mysterious killer hidden by a
hood, disguised in dark aviator glasses (Goldston, 1). On February 20, 1987,
a woman notices a shady looking character carrying a bag of wood and left it
outside a computer store in Salt Lake City. The bag of wood turned out to be
a bomb that injured a store employee. Finally, a face of sorts is put to a
name. The eyewitness account, might have done more harm than good
though. Ted Kacyznski, the Unabomber suspect, is actually ten years older
than the man described outside of the computer store. Kacyznski was a
suspect who was in the Task Force's database; but, he was ignored because of
his age.
LETTERS
The letters written to several newspapers, leaders in the field of
technology, and college professors give some important clues to the
Unabomber's identity. The Unabomber always refers to himself as "we" but
FBI investigators always believed that the bombings were a sole effort.
Through them we find a man bitter towards academia and technology,
possibly an ex-employee of one of the two fields. He makes references to
certain books like The Ancient Engineers.
For years, criminologists and the FBI's top profilers had been conjuring
up an image of the Unabomber. "As investigators and profilers, we came to
know him through his bombs and his written communications" (Douglas,
177). The initial bombings target suggested that he grew up in Chicago,
moved to Salt Lake City, and was residing in Northern California. The
bomber was comfortable around universities, they believed, though he
seemed to harbor a grudge against them because he possibly did not graduate
or excel. The bomber was thought to be a loner, who shunned society.
Possibly, suffering from a mental illness; chronic depression, and probably
was abused as a child. He was thought to work blue collar work most likely
dealing with power tools. And he was thought to be in his late thirties early
forties. Gregg McCrary a former FBI profiler says that they tend "to be 80
percent accurate in the profiles" (Ewell, 2). That is far from an exact science
but it serves well in screening potential suspects.
We find the suspect Ted Kaczynski remarkably similar, except that he
is ten years older than originally thought, did not work with power tools (due
to the fact that there was no plumbing let alone electricity in his shack), was
raised by a loving and supportive family, and he not only excelled in college
academically; he went or get his doctorate and taught mathematics at
Berkeley. Other than the virtual bomb laboratory found in Kaczynski's
shack, bottles of anti-depressant medication were supposedly found. But
other than that Kaczynski fits the profile of a loner, an underachiever and
extremely intelligent perfectly. Dr. Michael Rustigan, a criminologist at San
Francisco State University calls the Unabomber "the most intellectual serial
killer that this nation has ever known" (Kendall, 6).
The Unabomber's 18 year loathing of technology and industrial society
had an enormous affect on many lives in the United States. The Unabomber
created chaos with airlines, postal service, campus security, and put fear into
the hearts of proponents of technology. During 1995, security was doubled
at all major airports, because of the Unabomber's threat to blow up an airliner
flying of Los Angeles International Airport. Passengers were required to
show photo identification that matched their tickets, if not their baggage was
manually searched. Priority mail using stamps instead of postage meters, and
priority parcels dropped into mail boxes instead of handed over the counter,
have been separated from other items out of concern for safety. Suspect
items are flown in all-cargo airplanes rather than the commercial airliners that
carry most mail. "And even though a suspect has been arrested in the string
of Unabomber attacks, no changes are planned in the handling of parcels"
(Schmid, 1). Campus security was stepped up. Many universities like
Stanford, bought its own X-ray machine and sent its police force for
schooling in the Army bomb-detection center. At Berkeley, professors were
told not to leave bags of refuse laying around, because it could provide cover
for an explosive device (Gomes, 1). Computer and technology businesses in
Silicon Valley tried to keep the names of its employees out of
newspapers/press reports and tried to maintain the confidentiality of workers'
addresses.
The almost two decade search for the Unabomber yielded very little
clues. The US government posted a $1 million reward for leads that resulted
in the apprehension of the Unabomber and maintained a task force hot line
(1-800-701-BOMB). More than 20,000 were phoned in but the Unabomb
task force was still left very little evidence.
In June of 1995, the Unabomber's manifesto entitled "Industrial
Society and its Future" was received by the New York Times and the
Washington Post. The letter, that accompanied the 35,000 word document,
demanded that national newspapers publish his diatribe against technology.
He threatened to send another bomb "with intent to kill" if his document was
not published in its entirety. (New York Times Letter, April 24, 1995). The
Unabomber pledged to end his campaign of terrorism once his thoughts were
published. FBI officials, who urged the newspapers to publish the manifesto,
hoped that someone reading it would recognize the author through his words.
The FBI spent much of the next year publicizing the Unabomber's writings
(USA Today 11/13/96, 6). They hand delivered hundreds of copies of his
writings to university professor and leaders in the field of technology in the
hope that someone would recognize his work.
The FBI also used the Internet to aid in their efforts to capture the
Unabomber. The FBI's Unabomber web page included links to the
manifesto, warnings of what to look for in suspicious packages, and an email
address (unabomb@fbi.gov) to contact with information. The following is
taken from a letter by Dr. William L. Tafoya, of the Unabomb Task Force,
explaining the appeal to the Internet community:
The purpose for submitting the information on the Internet is two-fold.
First, the Internet is another medium that enables us to reach as wide
an audience as possible; to "spread the word". Second, Internet users
are precisely the type of individuals that to date have been recipients
of explosive devices attributed to Unabomb; scholars and researchers.
The FBI plan was to make the Unabomber's writings accessible in the
hopes that some professor, some family member, someone who knew the
killer would hear the "echoes of a friend or student or relative" (Gibbs, 16).
The FBI may have been right. Kaczynski's brother, David, recognized the
similarity between his brother's writings and the Unabomber's anti-
technology tract published in the Washington Post. In his anti-technology
manifesto, the Unabomber dismisses the Internet as a futile way to
communicate. But, it was on the Internet that David Kaczynski read
selections of the manifesto that convinced him that his brother might be the
Unabomber (Kovaleski, A03).
With the tip from David, all of the pieces seemed to fall into place.
That is when the FBI's high-tech two week stakeout began. The FBI's elite
Hostage rescue team was immediately called in. They are experienced in
survival training and can live for long periods in the wild; agents were
prepared to live outdoors in subzero temperatures. They employed infrared
and satellite surveillance of Kaczynski's meager home (Douglas, 108).
Finally after getting a warrant to search Kaczynski's cabin, agents posing as
Forest Service employees arrested the Unabomber suspect.
Federal investigators arrived at Kaczynski's dark, tiny cabin with some
of the most sophisticated technology ever developed to detect and defuse
bombs. Looking for evidence that Kaczynski was the anti-technology
Unabomber, the FBI and the ATF brought in such devices as a remote-
controlled robot and portable X-ray equipment to help search for bombs and
booby traps. They came with new scientific techniques specifically designed
during the Unabomber investigation to detect, analyze and defuse bombs
made in the unique hand-crafted style of the elusive serial bomber.
"Technology was developed just for this case because of the way he made his
bombs" (Paddock, 23). With the detailed preparation, new detection methods
and painstaking search, agents were able to discover and preserve one of the
most crucial pieces of evidence in the case: a completed bomb that was ready
for mailing. Given that the hunt for the Unabomber is one of the FBI's
highest priorities, the agency would be sure to use every technique at its
command to carry out the search.
Before entering the cabin, FBI agents bombarded the small structure
with electro-magnetic energy to create a picture of its entire contents, much
like an X-ray. This gave the FBI a three-dimensional view of the landscape
of the room (Paddock, 24). Also before entering, agents inserted highly
sensitive acoustic devices to sort out all of the sounds in the cabin and
determine whether there were any electronically operated booby traps,
because these devices make their own noise. One of the most important
techniques used in the search was the use of highly sophisticated chemical
sensors that can detect possible bomb components. Such "sniffers" can test
for small amounts of a chemical in the air. Much of the high-tech equipment
used by law enforcement in such searches was developed during the drug war
for entering booby trapped lairs of suspected drug dealers. When suspicious
material was located in Kaczynski's cabin, for example, the FBI used a robot
to enter the structure and retrieve it. Agents feared it could have been set off
if it was picked up. Once items were removed from the cabin, they were
moved to a work area outside the house where they were X-rayed on a
portable machine much like the ones used at airports. After the cabin was
deemed safe, the of the physical evidence was collected, bagged, and tagged.
This slow and meticulous process lasted almost a month.
The Unabomber case is set for November 12, 1997. Kaczynski's
defense lawyer needs the year to review the tons of damning physical
evidence that was collected. The bulk of the prosecution's case can rest on
the physical evidence itself, and it appears that in this case there will be a
mountain of it, including the documents found on the subject's premises, the
equipment he had, the notebooks, the partially completed bombs, and the
writings that describe bomb making. The prosecution will bring in
explosives experts to match up the bomb-making signature with the remnants
of devices recovered from the crime scenes (Douglas, 149). A typewriter
analysis will also be implemented to see if the typewriters found at the cabin
match the printed documents like the letters and the manifesto. DNA tests
will be done to try to match the saliva remnants on stamps to Kaczynski's
own DNA. Tools like wire cutters, wood files, and drill bits; that leave
trademark almost fingerprint like markings, will be analyzed and compared to
similar marks on bomb remnants. The prosecution will also try to trace
Kaczynski's past to correlate it with Unabomber attacks. The outcome of the
trial will be based on how much of the physical evidence found at
Kaczynski's home matches up with the Unabomber's physical evidence. The
pending trial will prove to be very interesting to say the least.